


The Springs

by Demidea



Category: Warcraft (2016)
Genre: Liontrust Secret Santa 2k16, M/M, hot springs!, mention of game canon, slightly nsfw, sorta don't look too hard, with inspiration drawn from WoW game mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9057202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demidea/pseuds/Demidea
Summary: At first, escorting an Archmage sounds boring. Easy. It's almost as if Khadgar had hired someone just to talk to on the long hike, someone who was otherwise superfluous. Or, perhaps, he hired someone because at the heart of his quest was a story, and a story must have an audience.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueMonkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMonkey/gifts).



_ Standing near the circle feels dangerous. The cavern they entered had been dimly lit, stubbornly so: the darkness clung to their lanterns and torches. Between their light and the scarce clusters of luminescent rock, the air might as well be smoke. But here, at the base of a long spiral, the chalice shines clear. _

_ “What is it?” _

_ “Stay out of the light.” Khadgar hums. He sets his pack down, a bad sign, and, with Atiesh in hand, steps into the light himself. “Something lost a long time ago.” _

_ In the light his white hair should shine. Does shine, but not white: his hair is dark brown, thick and full. The lines around his face are gone, as well, and his shoulderguards lift higher with more point than they had previously. He catches your expression, and for a moment the laugh lines return. “I look good for my age, don’t I?” His voice is light, deep and unfiltered by age. He sobers up quick enough, the analytical side of his character taking over. “Pity the transformation doesn’t take. It’ll wear off once I leave the chalice’s area of influence.” He studies the chalice for a moment, then looks up, where the point of a stalactite just barely pierces the sphere of light. “Ah. Of course.” _

_ He lifts Atiesh until the raven’s beak prodded the point of the stalactite. A miniscule drop of water falls from the tip, dropping into the chalice bowl. Instantly white mist pours over the rim, lapping at the edge of the light. From it, granules of light rose, and began to orbit the mage. _

_ Khadgar’s eye light up, but he holds out a hand. “Don’t worry. This is only as dangerous as I am.” _

_ Five points of light orbit in a cluster, the trailing mist combined to some form, until it stops under Khadgar’s jaw. The shape of a hand, large and square with long fingers, forms from the mist, and it comes to rest on Khadgar’s cheek. _

_ The scene hazes in and out, but not before a tear streaks down the mage’s face. _

~

“We’re lost.”

Lothar heaves a sigh and rolls up his map. “We’re not lost. We’re just a long ways away from where we’re going.”

“Is that why you were glaring a hole through your map for the past twenty minutes?” The boy says, not looking up from the cloth-bound tome he’s been hunched over since Lothar stopped them. He sitting cozy in a niche created by a small knoll on the roadside.

Lothar collapses beside him, leaning on him heavily just to be annoying. “We’re not lost. I was just hoping to get a warm bed and a bath before nightfall, but that isn’t likely. Which is a shame, too, because I could sorely do with a bath.”

“Yes. You could,” Khadgar agrees, as if he has any leverage whatsoever to push.

Lothar’s lips part and tilt up, a challenge spelled in exposed teeth, and drapes himself on diagonally across the boy’s chest, forcing the mage to support them both. Indifferent to Khadgar’s squirming and shoving, he lies like that for a moment, until their surrounding catches his attention and he perks up. “Do you smell that?”

“Your hair? Yes. I do, it’s kind of being shoved up my nostrils right now.”

“No,” Lothar sits up, straight, searching. “Minerals. Sulphur. Water.” He leaps to his feet, scanning the woods, before  darting off.

“Where are you going?” Khadgar asks, more to display the depth of his protest than with any expectation of receiving a satisfactory answer. With some effort, he also heaves himself to his feet, and, seeing that Lothar had a good lead on him, starts picking his way across the uneven forest floor.

“Come on!”

Khadgar does smell it not long into their run: sulphurous steam, hot mineral build up and warm water. At first, the source is unclear, especially when he loses line of sight on Lothar. Though they’ve travelled long and hard, his stamina has nothing on the warrior’s, and the incline of the hill wasn’t helping. But the tree coverage thins, the brush clearing entirely, and a light mist of steam and hot air shimmering in the sunlight betraying a hot springs otherwise hidden by a crust of boulders.

It takes some surveying and a risky climb, but he makes it over into the bowl-shaped pond. Lothar is wrestling with his armor when Khadgar pops over the side, his back naked with the promise of more exposed flesh once he’s loosened the straps on his leg armor.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Khadgar asks, eyeing the surface of the water. It moves occasionally, but not in a way that suggests boiling temperature. He couldn’t smell acid, so there’s that, but he’s known enough of the road and nature to be wary. He glances over, and away quickly when Lothar stands, fully naked and unabashed, only for his eyes to fall on a small metal plate.

“You ask too many questions. Enjoy things.” From the slosh of water that follows, Lothar follows his own advice. He hasn’t screamed in pain, so maybe he’s right to.

“It says here this is an ancient Druidic site, likely a purification site? My elvish is rusty.”

“And I intend to put it to good use.” When Khadgar risks a glance, Lothar stands close a few feet from shore, submerged to the waist. Slowly, he sinks to his knees, dipping his head back so his hair and beard spread out just under the surface of the water, his nose and profile just barely visible. A low, ecstatic sound escaping between his lips.

It was as good a recommendation as any, Khadgar figures, transfixed on Lothar’s form, shimmering under the surface of the water. He unpins his cloak, draping the cloth out next to him as he sits to remove his boots and socks. His bare feet feel the coarse sand, warm as if someone had laid their until their body heat fully soaked in, then moved. In fact, as he removes more clothes, he feels warmer rather than cooler.

Steam creeps up the thin bank, beckoning with a promise of perfect temperature water. It takes a few minutes to wiggle out of his shirt, and as he does, He hears the sound of movement in water. When he emerges from the cloth, Lothar is watching him with a predatory interest. Their eyes meet, and it occurs to Khadgar he should be bashful right now, with his Lord Commander watching as he did, but in the warmth he’s too much at ease to be bothered. So instead, he shifts to a crouch, without breaking eye contact, and pulls his pants down. Lothar sits straighter in the water, his shoulders peeking above the surface, now searching.

Khadgar tests the water with his foot, and discovers the water isn't just perfect, it goes a step beyond to divine. Where he’s submerged, he feels a silky heat, the water having a weightless quality to it that told him it had some kind of magic flowing through, but none of his internal alarms are going off. And while that could be insidious, Lothar’s eyes on his naked body suggested something more… carnal.

“Come over here,” Lothar calls, standing, “and help me with my back.”

Khadgar watches the water run down his chest in streams, over every swell and ridge, down the defined, flat stomach, around his bellybutton, and down to where the surface of the water and steam just cut off his view. “And what of your front?”

The gleam in Lothar’s eyes doesn’t waver. “We’ll get there. But first.” He motions for Khadgar to join him. “Bring the soap.”

Khadgar wades over. The water’s embrace is pleasant but so very, frustratingly, light on his skin. Lothar turns as he approaches, sinking into the water a little farther, raising his arms over his head, palms open and offering. Khadgar places his own hands into those palms, and Lothar’s calloused fingers close around his and guide them to lather soap in his scalp.

Gradually, he leads Khadgar’s hands down his neck, to his shoulders, then lets go as if to say  _ touch as you like. _ Which Khadgar does, indulging his fixation on glistening skin, marveling at the hard muscle underneath. Eventually, Lothar interrupts. “I think I'm clean enough.”

He dips below the surface, suds expanding outward where they can go no farther. He resurfaces facing Khadgar and much closer than expected, rising so fast he appears as a pillar of water. Arms wrap around Khadgar's middle, blue eyes leveling with his own as the water rushes down and reveals the man at the center.

Khadgar yips in surprise. “I thought you were going to return the favor.”

“You cleaned my body,” Lothar says, tightening his grip and lifting. Wet as they were, Khadgar slipped in his arms until his toes touched the sand. Khadgar can feel Lothar, hard, between his thighs, and shivers. “But you missed a spot.”

“I don't know if I can clean a dirty mind.” And with the way he eyes Lothar’s lips, it's clear he doesn't really want to.

“Only one way to find out.” His mouth on Khadgar’s is searing, wet and heady and everything the steam of the springs promised.

They heave up on the shore, Lothar climbing over him until their bodies slot together, pinning Khadgar’s hard cock between them. Lothar’s equally as hard between his thighs. The pointed shale pebbles of the shore dig into his back as they continue to shift and rock, rivulets of hot water pour down Lothar’s body and over Khadgar’s on a journey back to the earth, steam lifting in cooled puffs where dampness can’t collect into droplets.

Above him, Lothar, heavy lidded eyes revealing only a slit of dilated pupils, stares, transfixed, for just a moment before swooping down to catch Khadgar’s mouth once more-

~

_ All at once, the vision ripples, collapsing into a point. In the center of the light, Khadgar’s posed, reaching into the glowing column with one gloved hand wrapped around something that shone from between his fingers. The mist dispels quickly, briefly illuminating what darkness it dissipates into. _

_ “That was-” _

_ “Lord Lothar, yes.” Khadgar confirms. His eyes blink in and out as the power flickers. He smiles, tired lines deepening around his eyes. “But not as I knew him. The event you saw never took place.” His withdraws his hand, dipping his head with his hand disappearing behind his neck as if affixing a charm. “That was, well, more wishful thinking. A simple scenario: what if the world were not as it had been when I met him.” _

_ The scene lifts from the cave through the ceiling above the surface, the light of day cutting to the city of Stormwind burns. The road is littered with the fallen, both orc and beast and man. _

_ “What if there was no war.” _

_ Orcs fall and die, gnomish contraptions are shot from the sky, goblin machinery collapses under their own burning weight. Farmlands scorch, other are chewed by great swirling streams of magic. _

_ “What if our time together was unconsumed by our responsibilities.” _

_ An army marches through a field littered with fallen ancients. A line of archers draw, mages glow with arcane. _

_ “What if we had chosen a different path.” _

_ Khadgar stands alone on a field, his armor torn, missing a glove. His eyes are aglow with power, power, which he sees cut through a monstrous being bathed in green light. There is another next to him, and more behind them, looming, gaining ground. There will be no back up, he knows. And this doesn’t bother him. Not as the creature’s shadow falls over his face. Not as the arcane fades from his eyes. _

_ “What if we were not bound as we were to our people. Our duty. Useless thoughts, really. Nothing more than idle fantasies. Those realities will never exist to be explored. But I find no harm in entertaining them in moments of peace.” _

_ In the shadow of his death, Khadgar only looks relieved. _

_ And then, there is nothing more to look at. _


	2. Chapter 2

_ In Death, the light is blue-tinged and cold. Khadgar has walked many miles here, to reach the site. The perfect section of forest, the untouched mountain rising from its heart. The Spirit Healer, whose presence hung heavy over his back the entire journey, materializes in front of Khadgar. His hands reach up around his neck, and lift a pendant over his head. He offers it to the angelic being, who considers the point of light. She steps aside, the ghost light melting back to life’s true vibrancy. _

_ A man stands behind her, smiling as the humanity returns to his blue eyes. _

“Khadgar.”

“Lothar.”

The warrior offers his hand, a familiar smile playing on his lips. “Come, we’ve some business to finish.”

Khadgar takes it, allowing himself to be led into the steam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this part of the fic, then almost immediately after, discovered there is in fact an amulet appropriate for Khadgar to wear from the events of the first chapter to this one:
> 
> http://www.wowhead.com/item=27978/soap-on-a-rope


End file.
